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Match Preview: Glentoran v Carrick Rangers

Tue, 26/01/2021 - 01:06

Tuesday 26th January 2021, Kick Off 7.45pm

After the disappointment of Saturday’s postponement at Mourneview Park, this evening we make another effort to restart our season when Carrick Rangers visit the Oval for the second time of the season. This is one of the vagaries of this season’s fixture setting with a number of repeat fixtures before return fixtures were planned.

Carrick have been on/off members of the IPL since first winning promotion back to Senior football in 2011. There have been 19 league meetings between the sides since, with Glentoran winning 10, 7 draws and 2 Rangers wins. Incredibly, due to various COVID-19 related issues, Carrick have only played 1 game (a 3-0 defeat at Coleraine) since the sides last met on December 12th. Glentoran were comprehensive 6-0 winners that day, with a Robbie McDaid hattrick, a goal apiece for the Donnelly brothers and a header from the returning Hrvoje Plum.

After surprising many with a comfortable mid table finish last season (following promotion and an instant return to the IPL after relegation in the 18/19 playoff) Rangers have endured an equally surprising start to this campaign - finding themselves bottom of the table and with just 1 win after 9 games played. A 4-1 win at Taylors Avenue against newly promoted Portadown has been their only highlight and they have lost all 5 of their league games away from home so far, scoring just 1 goal in the process. Central Defender Caolan Loughran is joint top scorer so far with just 3 goals, along with forward Michael Smith, who bagged a hattrick in the win over Portadown.

On loan Glens players Stevie Gordon and Jonny Frazer will not be eligible to face their parent club but manager Niall Currie has brought striker Jordan Jenkins in on loan from Glenavon this week and also recently added young Portsmouth midfielder Gerard Storey to the ranks for the remainder of the campaign. Alex Gawne may return after struggling with injury so far this campaign.

Mick McDermott: “It was disappointing for all of us when the Glenavon game was postponed because we were looking forward to getting back into action. But we took the opportunity to have a very useful training session on Saturday afternoon and the boys all responded well. The injury situation is the same as Saturday with everyone available apart from Andrew Mitchell and Willie Garrett.

We had a good home win over Carrick last month, but I know Niall well and I admired how well they performed throughout last season. So we have prepared strongly for this first game back and the boys are all in a positive and enthusiastic frame of mind.

With all the rearranged fixtures announced yesterday by NIFL we have a very intensive period ahead of us with ten games in the next five weeks and eight league games scheduled for the 28 days of February. That’s a lot but we built a squad here of the right size and quality to cope with that level of intensity so we will go into it in the right matter. We’ve prepared well for it.”

Supporters are reminded that they can access our GlensTV live stream of the match by signing up or signing in here. Live match coverage can be purchased for £7 (which includes access to a full replay of the action), while a delayed stream will cost £3. Remember, our stream will commence just after 2.30 with a match preview programme, and our match commentator Aaron Agnew will be accompanied as co-commentator by our legendary, quadruple title winning skipper Paul Leeman. Season ticket holders will have free access to the stream as usual.